everything isn't simple nowadays
by frances janvier
Summary: His cage was his Judaism. It was barely even his religion now and was just a label. It had been converted into prison bars. /snippets of max/walter, mainly max


**There is such a lack of Max and Walter stories in the archive :'(**

 **C/P MOC:** "Why did you do all this for me?" Wilbur asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you." / "You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing."

 **Challenges by the Dozen:** level six [write six fics, each in a different genre] #5

 **NC Biweekly Tumblr Contest:** "You won't leave me, will you?" / "I'll stay here all night if I have to."

 **Pokemon Trading Cards:** Fennekin: Write about someone sweating in an uncomfortable area of your choice.

* * *

Everything was just so much more simple back then. Max didn't have to worry about finding any job that would even hire him, marriage laws, or hiding in a dark room for days with barely any food at all.

Nazi Germany was quite literally hell.

* * *

They met by coincidence on the street corner from their childhood.

"Did you hear about the new Nuremberg laws, Max?" Walter asked him without even a greeting. His face was contorted as if he was trying to hold something back.

Max felt a twinge of pain, but replied, "Yeah, I heard. I lost my job because of them."

Walter frowned. "Sorry about that, Max. I'm still trapped in that printing press nowadays." As he said that, Max envisioned papers flying up around his friend, surrounding him and caging him. Then again, it was better than being stranded in a place with nothing at all, not even a cage.

He supposed his cage was invisible, instead of an office. His cage was his Judaism. It was barely even his religion now and was just a label. It had been converted into prison bars.

Walter had started talking again, cutting into Max's thoughts. "And you can't marry any pretty German girls now," he said, a smile finally cracking out onto his face.

It is a German who I want to marry, but they aren't necessarily a girl, Max nearly said, but he kept that to himself. They couldn't have been anything in the first place; he had seen Walter around several girls before.

"I know, it sucks. I suppose you're missing all the pretty Jewish girls you could have married?" Max teased back. "Though, your selection wasn't much more limited by the new laws." It was true, though, that the Nuremberg Laws barely affected a typical German like Walter. They still lived like princelings, with Hitler the king, telling them words to make them blindly loyal.

He shook himself out of it. Walter was his friend. He sympathized with the Jews. He wasn't like the others.

Walter was silent for a few seconds before saying something else. "I miss seeing you as much, Max. You remind me."

* * *

Each time Max thought he had a new job in his grasp, it slid out of his grasp like a slippery eel and escaped away from him. It noticed his dog tag of a yellow star for Judaism, and disgustedly pushed him away because he was not a German like them, even though he had lived in Stuttgart for his entire life.

One after the other, the potential employers pushed away what they could never understand, some earlier than the others. But the outcome was always the same in the end, and Max could not even get hired to a job for three seconds. He kept pushing on as always, though, for maybe the result at the end would be more bearable if he kept moving around.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, in Old Germany, there was a German kid who lived in Stuttgart and loved to fistfight. But he wasn't a citizen of Germany anymore. That fairytale had been shattered by the Nazis and the Fuhrer, just like Jewish homes and places of worship would be soon on Kristallnacht.

* * *

Ironically, as a kid, Max had always dreamed of running away with Walter to somewhere safe together.

On Kristallnacht, when he abandoned his whole family to the Nazis, he got to run away with Walter. They went somewhere safe. And they were together during some moments.

They had run to the safe place of a dark storeroom at Walter's printing press. Max almost felt grateful that he was being hidden away in an uncomfortable place like there, because of all the guilt of being selfish for saving only himself and not his family or even other Jews.

So he gladly stayed holed up in the cramped storeroom, and gladly dined on only stale air for sometimes weeks at a time.

If only Walter wasn't there and helping him, if only Max still got to glance at Walter sometimes, then maybe he would have ended himself and ended the burden on the people hiding him in there.

* * *

One time, when Walter came to give Max a paper bag of food and water and supplies, Max whispered out to his friend with a voice scratchy from not being used much anymore.

"Why did you do all this for me?" Max asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything like this for you before."

"You have been my friend," replied Walter. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I would never desert you and leave you for the Nazis, Max."

* * *

He stayed in there for so long that all the days and numbers blurred together. They were insignificant. All Max knew was that it was a long time.

Of course, Max was accustomed to long waits in between meals brought by Walter. He knew to ration the food and spread it out over days.

But this time, the wait was especially long, and he seriously thought it was going to be the end of him right then. It was so _hot_ that day in the storeroom. Max's sweat was like tears.

Max was curled up in the fetal position when the door opened and closed quickly. Walter walked in holding the bag. "I'm so sorry for the wait, Max, it was just impossible to get away for a few minutes… But now I have a vacation day, for once."

"You don't have to give up your vacation day to care for me," Max croaked out, but his point was contradictory to him struggling to even move his jaw and promptly vomiting onto the floor after taking a bite out of an apple a minute later. The apple tasted like an especially sour lime.

"Rest, Max," Walter ordered quietly, but Max didn't need to be told twice.

* * *

When Max woke up later in a bit of delirium, he found Walter still sitting there next to him.

"You won't leave me, will you? I know people will be getting suspicious of your absence soon—"

"I'll stay here all night if I have to."

* * *

The train kept bringing Max farther and farther away from Stuttgart. Farther and farther away from Walter Kugler.

He thought about his own suffering as he read Mein Kampf, the book that had saved his life.

It was also the book that had brought him to Himmel Street and the Hubermanns.

It was also the book that had taken him away from Walter.

* * *

The walk to Dachau was long and endless. Max felt hungrier than he had even when Walter was taking care of him in the dark storeroom. He could still feel the ghosts of the lashes that punched at his back.

He briefly saw the girl who loved words and her friend with hair like lemons, but they had to vanish a moment later. That's how it felt with Walter. He was gone, now, and it was likely that Max would spend the rest of his life in the concentration camp, and would never see his closest friend again.

* * *

Everything was just so much more simple back then.


End file.
